Chloe Sevigny and Lou Reed at Madison Square Garden watching the New York Knicks

The View from the Bandstand: Life Among the Poobahs. The Velvet Underground’s Lou Reed on rock and roll music (on Aspen no. 3, published in Dec 1966).

Lou Reed gets quite snobby here.

an excerpt:

Rock-and-roll gobbled up all influences. Better blues musicians than the folk blues people. Better electronic music than the electronic people (i.e. England’s the Who; N.Y. ‘s Velvet Underground.) Classical music’s so simple. Really, anyone can write it. Anyone. It’s a phase like teething. If you tie a contact mike to a new-born baby and spin it by the umbilical cord, think of the sound. The freaks are winning, there’s no doubt about it, everyone better empty their pockets.

Aspen was conceived by Phyllis Johnson, a former editor for Women’s Wear Daily and Advertising Age. While wintering in Aspen, Colorado, she got the idea for a multimedia magazine, designed by artists, that would showcase “culture along with play.” So in the winter of 1965, she published her first issue. “We wanted to get away from the bound magazine format, which is really quite restrictive,” said Johnson.

You jump in front of my car when you,
You know all the time that
Ninety miles an hour, girl, is the speed I drive
You tell me it’s alright, you don’t mind a little pain
You say you just want me to take you for a ride

You’re just like crosstown traffic
So hard to get through to you
Crosstown traffic
I don’t need to run over you
Crosstown traffic
All you do is slow me down
And I’m tryin’ to get on the other side of town

I’m not the only soul who’s accused of hit and run
Tire tracks all across your back
I can see you had your fun
But darlin’ can’t you see my signals turn from green to red
And with you I can see a traffic jam straight up ahead

You’re just like crosstown traffic
So hard to get through to you
Crosstown traffic
I don’t need to run over you
Crosstown traffic
All you do is slow me down
And I got better things on the other side of town

Tidbit: I came across Charles “Bobo” Shaw through an interview of James Chance years ago; Maybe it was on Pitchfork and around that time I also found out great BOMB magazine owing to my then-ongoing James Chance fever. I just thought the name ‘Charles “Bobo” Shaw’ is cool and in the course of nature, got to get my hands on HAE (I couldn’t locate Black Artists Group stuff anywhere then). James Chance aspired to be a serious jazz musician and studied under David Murray of World Saxophone Quartet for a spell. It didn’t seem to work out and David Murray advised him to go Rock ‘N’ Roll way, which he did. I’ve never been lucky and well-off enough to witness The Contortions but my friend Nodagiri saw them at Matt Groening’s ATP. He said he saw James Chance busily counting plenty of greens at the merch table. It was hugely disappointing to hear that. hmm It appears no hipster can best time.

This Music Recorded Live in memory of Kada KAHAN
RECORDED LIVE IN PARIS – ARIES 1973

——————————————————————
A short review taken from “TOP TEN FROM THE FREE JAZZ UNDERGROUND” by Thurston Moore

The Black Artists Group was an unit not unlike that of The Art Ensemble of Chicago. Except they only recorded this one document and it only came out in France on a label named after the group. This is squeaky, spindly stuff and very OPEN and a good indication of what was happening in the early 70’s with members Oliver Lake (later of the infamous World Saxophone Quartet) and Joseph Bowie (Art Ensemble’s Lester Bowie’s bro, later to start Defunkt).
If you like Art Ensemble of Chicago (circa the 1970s) and the Human Arts Ensemble, you’ll like this recording. Needless to say, this music is hard as hell to come by.

What’s with the album cover? Good grief. These noble, uber-modern intellectuals of Art Music avariciously want to have everything; The last thing to complete the white bohemian: Embracing bespoke orientalism. Anyhoo, it looks good and the music in it sounds excellent so why I have to be sour about it? Readthe (presumed) liner noteto decipher this album’s Chinese backbone. There’s no way I’ll peruse it but it looks hella profound and informative from outside. You oughta learn at the very least one thing from it; About the BIG Chinese letter on the cover.

鳴 : Ming (Korean: Myung)means sound – the cry of a bird, or human singing. A starting-point, then, for words and music both, the fact of sound and its sounding.

Well, Ming music of AMM is definitely of the West, no matter how (much) you stress on the immanent spirituality of their music. I can almost smell the bread and the butter listening to it and of course, those are of the first water. FYI, this http://matchlessrecordings.com/node/346 review is rather good. Here’s my pick from it – “This album captures AMM, where AMM are right now, or where they were on the 4th May 2009. It shows a spirit of invention, a challenge to the musicians involved as new musical relationships needed to be forged, and also a sense of playfully creative mischief in the return to the quintet format. The group has always changed, always evolved, often sounded different, but the underlying ethics, the way the music is approached, considered and subsequently played is as strong here as ever.” You can say that again.

I remember listening to their non-impressive last album but didn’t know Keith Rowe quit already. It doesn’t really matter unless it’s John Tilbury, no? ..John Butcher doozily butchers as usual (a crappy pun. admitted). And one big news: These insipid old sags finally got a chick, moreover she’s relatively young and not ugly.

Back: Cellist Ute Kanngiesser

She has a weird Avant-Garde name to befit music she plays. For the further snobbization: ReadAn Interviewof Christian Wolff, who’s deemed a wild card of AMM. It’s on ever-wonderful BOMB magazine and the interviewer is Damon Krukowski of Galaxy 500 and Damon & Naomi. I really hate music he makes but this Harvard-graduated smarty-pants certainly knows the shit about music and how to shape conversation.